


Relativity

by Absolutely_Corrupted



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gravity Manipulation, Mutants, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Absolutely_Corrupted/pseuds/Absolutely_Corrupted
Summary: Maggie catches a dangerous virus which variously inhibits and enhances mutant abilities through random adrenal spikes.When the first 'spike' hits, her powers take on a mind of their own, sending her hurtling through time and space.Trapped in the past, she resigns herself to carving out a mediocre life while she searches for a somebody with the ability to send her back.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Maggie’s unexpected trip is heralded by pressure, heat, and then a strange tearing noise that echoes obnoxiously in her ears. Before she can process any of it, the experience is over, replaced by a new, equally unsettling sensation.

There’s nothing beneath her but air.

A shrill scream builds in her throat as she finds herself plummeting through the empty space she’s _positive_ her bed had occupied just a moment before. Fortunately, the free-fall doesn’t last long. Her ears have only just picked up on the sound of her own voice when the scream is abruptly cut off, forcibly knocked from her chest when she collides ribcage-first with a massive tree branch.

 _‘OW! What the hell?’_ Her mind is a jumbled mix of pain and confusion, but it doesn’t stop her from scrambling to secure her position on the branch. It takes a good while for her breath to return, but as soon as it does, she swings a leg over and releases the death grip she has with her arms in favor of a death grip with her thighs.

Looking around doesn’t answer a single one of her questions. She’s about 20 feet off the ground in the middle of a densely wooded area.

_‘This can’t be real. I’m dreaming.’_

Only, she’s never before felt pain like this in a dream.

Her certainty that it isn’t a dream is only solidified when it takes nearly a half hour to get down from the oak tree. _‘If this were a dream, time wouldn’t feel so_ long _.’_ She scowls when the implications sink in. _‘Damn Jack,’_ she thinks mulishly. _‘I bet this is his fault. He must have passed the virus on.’_ Of course, knowing that she’s awake (and powerless) doesn’t really help with figuring out how or why she’s in these woods.

With scraped palms and sweat dripping practically _everywhere_ , Maggie decides to pick a direction and walk. At first, the walking makes her feel like she’s accomplishing something. Eventually though, she has to sit down and rest. She’s been walking – barefoot – for long enough that the almost indiscernible early morning sun has shifted into brilliant daylight. It pierces through the leaves overhead and exacerbates the budding migraine she’s dealing with.

Luckily, rest turns out to be exactly what she needs. It gives her frantic mind a chance to slow down and actually take in what she’s seeing.

“Oh my god,” she slaps her forehead in exasperation. “I’m an idiot. I don’t need my powers for this!”

She shakes her head and quickly starts taking stock of what she’s seen so far. _‘Oak, maple, hickory, sycamore, birch, milkweed, (invasive) chinese honeysuckle – all things that wouldn’t be out of place in Maryland or Northern Virginia.’_ That’s good, because it means there’s a chance she’s not too far from home. It’s also probably why she didn’t think to examine the flora and fauna before. With it being so familiar, none of it stood out to her enough to break the panicked haze she’d been trapped in.

 _‘Now, where was that tree…?’_ Earlier, she’d passed a clearing filled with pointed stumps and surrounded by tree trunks stripped of their bark. The beaver sign meant there had to be a creek or stream close by. If she could find water, she could follow it until she came across some sign of developed land.

Plan in place, Maggie rises once more to her feet.

.

.

.

Six hours later, she’s wondering if she shouldn’t have stayed in the woods. At least there, things made _sense._

“This is _today’s_ paper?” she asks, clenching it tightly as the room around her tilts dangerously.

“Yesterday’s, actually,” the secretary points out. Then, in what she must assume is a helpful gesture, she offers to go off in search of a more current copy.

“No, thank you.” Maggie puts a little too much force into the refusal, if the other woman’s funny look is anything to go by. Honestly though, how else is she supposed to react to finding herself over half a century in the past?

“Excuse me.” She stumbles over to the restroom pointed out to her when she first arrived. She slams and locks the door behind her, half-expecting some sort of break-down. Instead, she’s left staring wide-eyed at her reflection in the mirror. She shouldn’t be surprised. She’s not one for dramatics or physical outbursts.

“What the _ever-loving-fuck_ ?” Scratch that – it’s not as flashy as throwing things or crying, but she does have another outlet at her disposal. “Shit. I’m in the goddamn past. The fucking _fifties_. What the hell.” Cursing is an excellent way to relieve tension. She whisper-shouts a string of increasingly inappropriate expletives and then screams into her elbow for good measure.

Suddenly, she can breathe again.

At least somewhat calm now, Maggie rakes her hand through her tangled hair, then turns back to the tiny mirror above the sink. “What am I going to do?” Her reflection stares back, looking just as lost and hopeless as she feels. “What _can_ I do?”

It’s really too bad her powers choose that moment to kick-in.


	2. Chapter 2

After accidently trashing the restroom in the police station and then not-so-accidentally escaping from a hoard of pissed off cops, Maggie finds herself in a public library. Eventually, she’ll have to crawl out from the supply closet she’s in, but that can wait a couple of hours. For now, she’s satisfied with the quiet, dark place.

She didn’t exactly get much sleep before she was suddenly falling through time and space.

When she wakes up – hours later judging by the lack of light beneath the door – Maggie finally feels in control of her abilities. She’s still exhausted, but the returned awareness of the gravitational waves surrounding her means that the mutant bug affecting her is mostly gone.

Of course, that doesn’t really help with her current situation. She can’t exactly use her powers to move forward in time. Hell, she hadn’t even known she could move backwards in time until earlier that morning!

Her idiot brother is to blame. Jack had gone to visit his sick friend in the hospital – despite the rules about non-vaccinated mutants in facilities that have handled outbreaks of Spike – and had evidently passed it on to Maggie as a result.

The mutant-only virus is well known for specifically targeting the neurochemical systems that deal with controlling and distinguishing abilities granted by the x-gene. The unlucky ones who catch it lose all sense of their gifts and have to deal with random adrenaline spikes which trigger them anyway. The ‘spikes’ often come as a surprise to both bystanders and the afflicted mutant themselves – leading to injuries and even death when the mutant is on the more powerful side of the spectrum.

Maggie supposes she’s lucky to only be temporally displaced and not dead or a murderer.

On that cheerful note, she decides it’s time to crawl out of the closet before her thoughts can spiral further. She dusts herself off and takes note of the time according to the clock on the wall. It’s just after two in the morning, which means it’s unlikely that anyone will notice her if she takes to the skies.

 _‘At least_ something _is going right.’_

A few minutes later finds her gently closing a second floor window behind her. The air is brisk, reminding Maggie that it’s September in this time, not June. It’ll be a chilly flight, but she can manage. Her main goal is to get far enough away from this town that she doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of her inexplicable appearance or her even more inexplicable destruction of property.

…And that brings to mind another terrible thought. Not only is she stuck in the past with no identification or resources, but she’s stuck far enough in the past that mutants aren’t even common knowledge yet. If she’s not careful, she could end up a lab rat… or worse.


End file.
